Before the 2024 WNBA regular season ends today, only a few playoff matches remain to be decided.

One is whether the Atlanta Dream, Washington Mystics or Chicago Sky will secure the eighth and final playoff spot. Another is whether the Connecticut Sun or Las Vegas Aces will secure the third spot.

The Sun currently sit in 3rd place, but if they lose to the Chicago Sky today and the Aces beat the Dallas Wings, Las Vegas would take 3rd place.

Whichever team secures third place will face the No. 6 seed Indiana Fever, led by rookie sensation Caitlin Clark.

However, it was announced that the Aces will rest all four of their top players (A’ja Wilson, Jackie Young, Chelsea Gray and Kelsey Plum) for Thursday’s game against the Wings.

While this is normal behavior for a veteran team, some fans on social media are convinced that Vegas intentionally wants to lose Thursday’s game (and the resulting 3rd place seed) to avoid a matchup with Clark and the Fever.

“A team of 5 Olympians dodging a rookie in the playoffs 😭😭😭😭😭,” wrote X-user @wsgcaesar.

For context, all four Aces players named above competed for Team USA at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, while Aces forward Megan Gustafson also played for Team Spain in Paris.

“The Las Vegas Aces say they’d rather face the Seattle Storm in the first round than the Indiana Fever. Vegas will rest its star players and forgo a chance to finish third,” added @WNBAStormChaser.

To be clear, there’s virtually no chance the Aces will rest their best players to avoid the Fever, especially given their 4-0 losses to Clark and Indiana this season.

This is how most fans responded to the above comment, including X-user @natfluential, who wrote: “Considering they just beat the Fever in a mini-series, I’m pretty sure they just want their players to rest.”

Regardless of the Aces’ reasons for this hiatus, the first round of the WNBA playoffs is sure to produce some exciting matchups.